Music/Gaming PC

I'm building a new PC for gaming, music, and graphics work and I want to know about any suggestions or pitfalls anyone here has encountered. I've built PC's in the past but it's been a long time (7 or 8 years since I got my mac) and I don't know much about the market these days or what kind of specs are important. I'm reading on sites like tom's hardware to figure out what kind of components I want for gaming, but what should I consider in the audio department? Are there any audio cards that specifically can handle music and gaming? I don't want to just get a recommended music-making audio card and find it suffers with gaming or vice versa.

Bonus for recommending an audio card with lots of ins and outs. Right now I have a tc electronic konnekt 8 with basically two channels of input (not enough) and it would be nice to have a card that lets me pursue my hardware fetish without having to deal with a hardware mixer.

any good hybrid gaming/music sound cards out there? am I clueless for asking this question? thanks.

I really doubt there is much in the way of a "hybrid gaming/music sound card out there" but I could be wrong. They definitely seem to be completely different markets and have much different requirements. I can pretty much guarantee your not going to find an audio card with lots of ins and outs.

I would recommend you just look at them as completely separate entities. If you want bad ass gaming audio I don't see the point in spending 50 bucks on a 7.1 card because you should be on the mic and your blasting loud 7.1 speakers will annoy the fuck out of your friends during games (you have friends right?) So I say get some 7.1 USB headphones for around a hundred bucks (I believe all of those don't require an audio card and have built in mics) my friends is pretty awesome and it was right around 100 bucks (very immersing audio for gaming)

Hardware interfaces are definitely still the best way to go for serious audio multiple ins and outs amirite guyes?

how's the amd vs. intel thing these days?

My link

yiuh

I've got an Echo AudioFire 4 and use it for gaming and music making (and DVD watching). It's only 4.0 sound output (due to the number of audio out sockets) rather than full surround but it has all the inputs I need - and you can have even more I/O if you go for like the AudioFire 8 (8 of each in fact!).

  On 11/3/2010 at 4:13 AM, iamabe said:

I'm building a new PC for gaming, music, and graphics work and I want to know about any suggestions or pitfalls anyone here has encountered.

 

Bonus for recommending an audio card with lots of ins and outs.

I believe it's still a good idea to get a firewire card with a TI chipset if using a firewire audio interface.

With regards to the card itself, the focusrite Saffire pro range have a good rep, I'm looking at one myself at the moment to upgrade from my firebox.

http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/saffire_pro_40/

  On 11/3/2010 at 8:17 AM, hahathhat said:

how's the amd vs. intel thing these days?

Intel still in the lead. The i5 760 was hitting the price/performance sweet spot recently.

My i9 is fairly tasty

  On 11/3/2010 at 5:08 PM, bigfatLOL said:

My link

 

yiuh